A SAFE PLACE
Announcing the Opening of:
Georgia
It is Georgia s other loves, art and literature, that hold the
most allure for me, and the generous and eager manner in
which Georgia shares the gathering of a lifetime.
COUNSELING SERVICE
Renee Audrain,
M.ed.
Nancy Gilpatrick,
MSW, RCSW
Intimacy Issues
Survivors of Abuse
Communicating Rationally
Addiction Recovery
Growing Past Survival
Parenting Concerns
Self esteem for Women &
Alternative Lifestyle Counseling
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he Oregon coast is something that I. a
native Easterner, could not have imagined.
Maine was my idea of wet and wild. Oregon is a
giant unending Maine. I'll never forget the day
Girlfriend walked me along the beach for the
first time.
We were alone — not just on a small patch of
sand, with overpopulated beach blankets sur-
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I rounding us and small humans upending solid
pail-shapes. No. we were utterly alone except
for a very occasional dogwalker. I had not
thought this kind of solitude on a shore possible
J in the twentieth century. We walked and walked
along the w ater. Waves w hich the stormiest day
I on the East Coast could not produce rose under
the sun like a sprinting Niagara Falls, broke,
and Hung themselves at us.
Girlfriend seemed to be heading in the direc­
tion of enormous towering rocks. Not the piles
of boulders to be found on the New England
coast, but huge single rocks caressed, pounded
and shaped by the surf. Closer and closer we got
1 to the amazing prehistoric souvenirs.
And then I saw what Girlfriend had really
brought me for. There were holes in these rocks.
No. not holes: archways, doors, stand-up caves!
The magnificence of nature's work was stag­
gering and miraculous to me.
Afterwards, and yes. it was like after love-
making. we returned to Georgia's. Her cavern
is a small home pitched atop a grassy, gorse-
thick cliff from which she could watch the two
of us cavort and explore. She encourages her
guests to walk the beach she scans by eye from
her sedentary aerie. She claims vicarious plea­
sure from watching those of us under age 80
who can t seem to get enough of the pretty
stones and shells, bleached wood and flotsam
strewn in the vast natural toy department of the
beach.
Georgia already has the pick of the briny crop
inside her home — almost a user-friendly gal­
lery. Bowls of jaspers collected and polished
when this was her hobby with Jeannie. her late
companion. Round blue glass balls that once
served to buoy nets. A plethora of favored
ocean booty. No matter how often I visit, there
are always more surprises.
This treasure trove would be enough to draw
me back month after month. I suspect, though,
that it is Georgia's other loves, art and litera­
ture. that hold the most allure for me. and the
generous and eager manner in which Georgia
shares the gathering of a lifetime.
You see. I've never known anyone like
Georgia before. The whole world predicted
tragedy for me and my ilk by age 80: we could
only be alone, spumed, twisted, bitter, wasted.
As a matter of fact, those words fit the youth
and middle age predicted for us. too. Now that I
have family — generations of peers — I see
before my eyes my bright future in the guise of
Georgia.
b
She was bom in Maxwell. Iowa, in 1907 —
on Guy Fawkes Day. as she is wont to add. She
graduated from Rockwell College in 1930 and
four years later met Jeannie. who had earned an
MA from Northwestern. They spent half of
1937 in Europe. Then they lived in Montana for
about twenty years, where they earned their
living as teachers and proprietors of a little
bookshop. Georgia taught modem European
history to Air Corps cadets during World War
II: Jeannie taught military English to the Army
engineers. Jeannie always wrote poetry and was
published in some of the finest magazines.
Posthumously. Georgia published a volume of
Jeannie's verse.
It was in the 1950s that the two lifelong com­
panions came to Bandon. Oregon, for a vaca­
tion. By 1958 they'd built their cliff home —
and a tiny restaurant where, while Georgia took
care of the customers. Jeannie turned out kettles
of barbeque sauce for chicken. She also was
famous for her ham-on-a-bun sandwiches. The
editor (Georgia had accepted a job at Oregon
State University Press) and the English teacher
settled into a life of which most married couples
only dream.
Meanwhile, they were amassing collections
of books and prints. I have only to mention
Utrillo, say. or Bernard Buffet, or the artist-of-
Georgia's-eye. Georgia O'Keefe, to send
Georgia, in her wheelchair, on an intensive
treasure hunt She returns w ith a lapful of art
books, or prints, or articles whose subjects
range from the Impressionists to Frank Stella.
She gives her memories like gifts, too. One
tune she told Girlfriend about attending a
Chicago performance of Gertrude Stein's Four j
Saints in Three Acts and seeing Gertrude and
Alice in the audience.
Another time, on learning of my passion for
art depicting New York City, she trotted out a
postcard of the city, written to Jeannie by poet
and anthologist Oscar Williams. I was flabber­
gasted. Williams was only the editor of all the
first poetry books I ever owned and pored over.
Georgia's casual possession of such an artifact
made literary history seem almost down home,
something close to my life and about people
like me.
Then there is her connection with Doris Lee.
a friend from the Chicago days who made a
reputation as a primitive artist. The Chicago Art
Institute sells holiday cards using one of her
paintings, and I recently saw a print at the Port­
land Art Museum in Oregon.
Each visit ends after Girlfriend and I wend
our way back up from the sand, our pockets full
of rocks. We spread our stockpiles before
Georgia: a bit of a rock hound, an expert. She
then identifies each rock and its potential. For
years she machine polished these little sculp­
tures of the sea and sold them at her Sea Shop
Restaurant. In our parting ritual. Georgia will
lift and inspect each stony offering, categorize
and grade the lot.
“ Ah!" she'll say. “ This is a good one. It's
hard. And look at these lines. ’ she'll add.
pointing out streaks of red or gold or patterns.
She can spot petrified wood at a glance. I never
even knew that one could find such a thing on
the beach. My favorite, a gift from Georgia, is a
tweedy little stone with a close-set wavy grain
in brown-gray and off-white, shaped by the
years, polished by Georgia.
On the other hand, when I pick up a clunker,
as I often do. she dismisses it with disdain.
“ That's just a rock. A nice rock, but a rock."
This seems very much in character for a
connoisseur of twentieth-century culture, my
chairside arbiter, a woman living a rich cultural
life who is still drawing artists and writers to her
salon by the sea.
• I